Rapture For The Geeks

It's probably safe to assume that Jesus Christ is not going to come back to earth to deliver the final judgement or that the world's going to end on 21 Dec 2012 as the Mayans reckoned. And we can only hope humanity's not going to get wiped out by interstellar projectiles, WMDs, pandemics, natural disasters or any combination thereof any time in the near future.

It might be more pragmatic, sadly, to talk about the realities of climate change, poverty and famine that are all too real for many people on this planet. Let's face it, we're not doing a very good job of looking after our Earth... or each other.

Perhaps keeping death front of mind is an unavoidable human preoccupation and theorising on the possible forms of a total apocalypse is symptomatic of this. Personally, I would hate to see the predicted singularity get put into the same bracket...

A.) Because we have proof that the preceding technological developments are actually happening right now... very frequently
and
B.) Because it could be so beautiful... climate change, poverty and famine could immediately become outmoded concepts that cease to have any sway in a world dominated by superintelligent transcendence

It's no bad thing to dream of a better reality but pay attention to the facts as they occur, otherwise you might be surprised at how different your dream was from somebody else's.